Why is Carbon, the building block of life, safe when eating or drinking (carbonated water), but not when breathing (carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide)?
In: Biology
Please, chemistry is so much more complicated than that. Even two incredibly complex molecules that are almost identical except for the tiniest difference can still function wildly differently.
Anyway, its good to drink water right? But it’s not so good to pour water into your lungs. Things function in a speicific way under specific conditions. Carbon is no exception to this. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide aren’t specifically toxic to life, but they displace oxygen and not having oxygen is always bad. Our air is 78% Nitrogen, but breathing in a higher percent can do the same thing. That doesn’t make nitrogen dangerous, and it also doesn’t make every compound containing nitrogen safe either.
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